This invention relates generally to ice piece makers for refrigerators and the like and more particularly to an improved ice piece maker that makes half crescent shaped ice pieces, and an improved method for making such half crescent shaped pieces.
Perhaps the most prevalent current form of ice piece makers currently employed in home refrigerators and freezers make full crescent shaped ice pieces with crescent shaped parallel sides and a rectangularly shaped cross sectional profile viewed in a plane normal to the parallel sides, and further having a flat, top surface.
The full crescent shaped ice pieces are easily formed and removed from ice piece makers and require simpler and less expensive ice piece making mechanisms than do makers of ice pieces of different configuration--i.e. cubes, cylinders, etc. Because of this feature, the full crescent shape has been preferred by most manufacturers of domestic ice piece makers. It remains, however, that although adequate for many applications, the full crescent shape presents difficulty in use in the home particularly when used for cooling beverage glasses but also in storage, removal and handling of the ice pieces in preparation of beverages and other used for ice pieces.
The full crescent shaped ice pieces, when combined with a beverage in most beverage glasses, have a propensity for aligning themselves in the glass such that the arcuate surface of the ice piece conforms to the inside curvature of the beverage glass so that, when the beverage glass is tilted in order to drink therefrom, the crescent shaped ice piece, in coaction with the inner surface of the beverage glass, forms an effective dam, interfering with the proper flow of the beverage to the mouth of the drinker.
Furthermore, full crescent shaped ice pieces are somewhat difficult to insert in glasses ordinarily used in the home for holding most beverages. More specifically, the length of the top surface of the crescent shaped ice piece coupled with the fact that the ice pieces are frequently found in the collection bin joined together in groups of three or four or more, up to the length of the forming tray, make it difficult to fit such large groups of ice pieces into a glass. Often it is not possible to fit more than two joined full crescent ice pieces into a glass at a time if the glass opening is small.
Furthermore, it is difficult to scoop the crescent shaped ice pieces from the collection bin with a cup or a scoop, for example, because of their size and awkward shape. And even when the crescent shaped ice pieces are successfully scooped out of the collection bin with a cup or scoop, some of them frequently either break off, or simply slip off the scoop and drop on the floor where they slide in all directions. Free ice pieces on a vinyl kitchen floor present about the same dangerous situation as a bar of soap on a wet tiled bathroom floor.
Also, small ice pieces are easier to store in a freezer and are a better size for use in certain appliances such as an ice cream maker or in a blender where they are more easily crushed and blended than are larger ice pieces.
Clearly, the formation of smaller, lighter, and less awkwardly shaped ice pieces, such as half crescent shaped ice pieces, marks a definite improvement in the art of forming ice pieces for use in home refrigerators and also in certain commercial applications such as the manufacturing of ice pieces to be sold in bulk by stores, service stations, etc. Such a half crescent shaped ice piece maker is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,494 issued 5/8/90 to Karlovits and entitled "Making Ice In A Refrigerator."
The Karlovitz patent discloses an elongated freezing tray with an arcuately shaped inner surface divided into crescent shaped cavities by equal spaced separators to form a plurality of crescent shaped cavities. A rotatable shaft 40 is secured at both ends in suitable bearings with its axis coincident with the axis of the arcuately shaped inner surface of said tray and further having three rows of ejector elements 44, 46, and 48 secured to, and extending radially outward from the rotatable shaft 40. Each of these three rows of ejector elements lies in a separate column parallel to the axis of said rotatable shaft and spaced 120.degree. from the adjacent rows of ejector elements.
In its starting position (FIG. 2) the ejector element of one row 40 of ejector elements, identified herein as the primary ejector elements, extends perpendicularly down into the center of a water filled crescent shaped cavity 18 to divide the crescent shaped volume of water into two half crescent shaped volumes of water which are then frozen to form two half crescent shaped ice pieces.
Probably the primary problems encountered with the present day prior art half crescent shaped ice piece makers is that both the leading and lagging rows of half crescent ice pieces become so strongly frozen to the primary ejector element that all or some of the ice pieces will not break loose from the primary ejector element when the ice pieces impact the stripper elements, thus possibly stalling the rotational action of the ejector elements and effectively jamming the ice maker. Human help is then required to break loose the ice pieces from the primary ejector element so that operation of the equipment can continue.
Also, when only some of the leading half crescent ice pieces remain frozen to the primary ejector element and others break loose from the ejector element upon impact with the stripper elements some of the lagging half crescent ice pieces will fall back against the subsequent row of ejector elements.
However, if all of the lagging half ice pieces don't fall back together, the lagging ice pieces that do fall back can easily move transversely on the subsequent row of ejector elements, thereby becoming badly misaligned with the stripper element assembly and causing jamming and possible stalling of the equipment when the subsequent row of ejector element rotates such lagging half crescent ice pieces around to impact the stripper elements. There is also a possibility that the loose, lagging half crescent ice pieces will fall over the end of the lagging row of ejector elements and back into the freezing tray.
A prospective ice making refrigerator purchaser might select an alternate ice making refrigerator not having the above characteristics.
A further characteristic of the above prior art half crescent shaped ice maker is that the half crescent shaped ice pieces often remain frozen to the ejector fingers and to each other so that they often break loose from the ejector elements in a noisy manner and in a clump of half crescent shaped ice pieces which then fall into the collection bin, thereby making additional unwanted noise.
Furthermore, clumps of half crescent shaped ice pieces often don't break up into individual half crescent shaped ice pieces upon impact with the collection, but instead tend to form into a more dense cluster of ice pieces which are frequently unusable.
It would mark a definite improvement in the art to provide a half crescent shaped ice piece maker in which the full crescent shaped ice pieces consisting the leading and lagging rows of half crescent ice pieces remain as full crescent shaped ice pieces until they fall into the collection bin whereupon each individual full crescent shaped ice piece breaks into two individual half crescent shaped ice pieces unattached to other half crescent shaped ice pieces.